It's not that the released images are not satisfying, it's the FEAR that ESA won't release any more of those wonderful images.

My fear is that an enabling factor behind these images is that they have no [obvious] scientific news therein, so there's no motive for a PI to hold onto them. Setting us up for indefinite embargoes when the actual science mission results come in.

By analogy, imagine if Voyager had published their Earth-Moon picture immediately, but had not released their pictures from Jupiter, Saturn, et al, until many months after the encounters. That would have robbed humanity of something that, admittedly, most of humanity didn't PAY for, but that enriched the lives of countless people who saw them. It was a lot more exciting to think "Wow -- our Voyager is at Jupiter" than it would have been to think, "Here are some images Voyager took during its Jupiter flyby last year."

My fear is that an enabling factor behind these images is that they have no [obvious] scientific news therein, so there's no motive for a PI to hold onto them. Setting us up for indefinite embargoes when the actual science mission results come in.

By analogy, imagine if Voyager had published their Earth-Moon picture immediately, but had not released their pictures from Jupiter, Saturn, et al, until many months after the encounters. That would have robbed humanity of something that, admittedly, most of humanity didn't PAY for, but that enriched the lives of countless people who saw them. It was a lot more exciting to think "Wow -- our Voyager is at Jupiter" than it would have been to think, "Here are some images Voyager took during its Jupiter flyby last year."

Had the Voyagers used the same release policy as ESA, we would have seen two or three images each of Jupiter and Saturn, maybe one each of Uranus and Neptune, and if we were really lucky one image each of each of the targeted moons. And we would have waited for from six months to three years after the images were acquired before seeing them.

After all, the general public has absolutely no need or desire or interest in seeing more than one or two images of something, right? That kind of thing is obviously only of *any* interest to the PIs, right?

-the other Doug

--------------------

“The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain

I thought one of the best aspects of the picture was that the dark rigging to the left shows a bit of marslight glinting off of it.

I think that's actually horizontally scattered light from the overexposed Mars disc to the right, not "mars-shine". It matches with the vertical extent of Mars' disc very well and does not illuminate the whole rigging at the left. The charge bleeding is also in the horizontal direction and this faint glow to the left might actually be readout smear. I doubt CIVA has anything as complex as a physical shutter to eliminate this so it's left with the same behavior as NH LORRI camera.

I emailed Dr. Gerhard H. Schwehm, Head of ESA's Solar System Science Operations Division, congratulating him on the success of the fly-by and asking when we might see some more images, and he very kindly wrote back...

"We should have more images soon - after the teams have recovered from Sunday.I believe in the next couple of days you will find more on the ESA Web.Though from the Lander Camera there isn't so much more to come as they onlytook a couple of shots. But from OSIRIS we are looking for more."

I was shown the door into the main control room itself and the atmosphere was extraordinary.

Well, this point recovered me some old (and funny) memories.

I was a few times at ESOC on 1990/1991 when our company was working on an ESA project. The first time I was there they gave me a tour around some of the facilities, and shown me a control room (for the Meteosat IIRC). I had never seen an spacecraft control room and was expecting to see a Shuttle-like LCC (Launch Control Center) with consoles, a lot of people, and some big screens showing a world map and the spacecraft orbits. They opened the door and I had a glimpse inside the room. The consoles were there, two or three guys too, and the big screens.

But instead of the expected world map with the spacecraft orbits, one of those screens was showing, well, an American wrestling match!!!

IMAGE COPYRIGHT
Images posted on UnmannedSpaceflight.com may be copyrighted.
Do not reproduce without permission. Read
here for further information on space images and copyright.

OPINIONS AND MODERATION
Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the
individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions
of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer
UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent
of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence
over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators.

SUPPORT THE FORUM
Unmannedspaceflight.com is a project of the Planetary Society
and is funded by donations from visitors and members. Help keep
this forum up and running by contributing
here.